That Kapunda Crown

Originally posted on the 'History of Kapunda' blog on Friday, August 17, 2012

While conducting research for an investigation for another of our passions, Eidolon Paranormal; Karen and I stumbled across this piece of Kapunda's forgotten history.  We printed the story and placed it on the notice board in the front bar of the Clare Castle Hotel, hoping someone would come forward with some information. Unfortunately, not even the longtime regular's had seen the image before!
We had another mystery to be solved in Kapunda!

Below is what we posted on the notice board in the Hotel:


"Kapunda Revelation"

"After many layers of paper in the quaint Clare Castle Hotel at the Adelaide end of Kapunda had been removed, this design, measuring three feet, was found painted on the wall above the mantelpiece in the front room: it is in gold, green and black."


Later, we were researching for another Kapunda location and stumbled across the answer to the mystery of the Kapunda crown. The mystery of The Kapunda Crown was solved by this article, written in The Advertiser in 1954.

That Kapunda Crown

With commendable promptitude, Mrs E. O'Neill, president of Glenelg Sunshine Club has explained from 'Carmel,' 3 College street, Glenelg. the origin of the Crown at the Clare Castle Hotel. Kapunda

'The picture in your column took my mind back to my childhood watching my father, the late Edward (Ned) Murphy drawing that crown. He was the licensee.

'I do not remember why, as I was only six. Father had a peculiar trait to paint and draw things like this. 'He was a very intelligent man; when he died 21 years ago. at 86. he had retained his remarkable mentality.

Did Other Drawings

First, he was the licensee of the North Kapunda hotel for three years, during which time he was a councillor. Sir Sidney Kidman and Mr Charlie Coles were personal friends of his. When Queen Victoria died my parents draped the front of the Clare Castle in black. Father drew and painted a life-size picture of Queen Victoria for the centre. About this time, 1901. he drew the crown. I remember his doing the heart and saying to us children. 'The Throne and the Queen are the heart of the Empire. Many other hotels bear some drawing or inscription done by dad at Robe, on the window of a temperance hotel is something he did with a diamond ring.

I, unfortunately, burnt the only photo of the Clare Castle after father's death. I enclose one of the North Kapunda, taken about 1898. My father is the young man in shirt sleeves. Mother is standing by myself, a little tot looking through the balcony bars. One of the maids holds my baby brother, later an original Anzac.

Kept City Hotels

Mrs O'Neill says her father (Edward Murphy) and mother had many guests at their Adelaide hotels. Most famous was Madame Sarah Bernhardt at the Metropolitan in Grote Street. Mr C. C. Kingston, who lived farther west on the West terrace corner, wanted her father to buy half of Kingston Park, Marino, for £10. My grandparents were among the first Port Adelaide hotelkeepers. Migrants stayed there until they got work or land,' she adds.

Researched and written by Allen and Karen Tiller © 2012

 Haunted History with the Tiller’s

Allen Tiller paranormal investigator, Historian and Author and Karen Tiller Paranormal investigator and Founder of Whimsy creations join Jason Ghost Hunter team to talk about the fascinating history of Australia.

Jason Ghost Hunter on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jasonghostman1972

Jason and Julia also appear in the documentary Ghosthunter: https://www.facebook.com/ghosthunterthemovie

Ghosts of the Barossa: The North Kapunda Hotel

North Kapunda Hotel

The North Kapunda Hotel was built in 1848 by the North Kapunda Mining Company. ‘The Northern Arms Hotel’ as it was then called, was a small single-story hotel situated on Franklin Street Kapunda, the first publican was a man named John Bickford.

 

James Crase: 1879 - Photo SLSA: B76601

In the early 1850's the hotel was sold to a local butcher, James Crase. Mr Crase was a wealthy local man with big dreams for the town of Kapunda. He also had big plans for his newly purchased hotel. His first step in changing the hotel was a rebranding from the Northern Arms Hotel to The Garland Ox Hotel.

 In 1865, Crase invested heavily in his hotel, expanding the basement area, and building the second story of the hotel, which also linked the previously built miners quarters at the rear (now referred to as the “Hallway From Hell”, but once known as the Bachelors Hall).
  The new hotel featured the most expensive kitchen in Australia at the time, located in the basement, which now also had living quarters and a rainwater tank. Upstairs now contained a living area for the Crase family, a new meeting room known as The Commercial Room, and hotel and display rooms for travelling salesmen. Crase also built a new two-story building at the rear of the hotel that could house banquet dinners and roller skating, as well as a small bowling alley.

 Mr Crase sold the hotel in the early 1880's, but not after dealing with much controversy, with members of his staff caught selling alcohol outside of hours, prostitution, and gambling in his establishment.

 Later owners were also caught doing similar things, and in 1923, under the ownership of Mr Pearce, the hotel lost its liquor licence for a year. To survive, the downstairs and rear accommodation served as a brothel.

Basement North Kapunda Hotel 2009:
Photo by WISPA  Paranormal

 The Hotel has seen numerous deaths in its 165 plus years of service, including scissor grinder Martin Jansen who choked to death in the ground floor Parlour.
 Henry Binney Hawke, a very well respected man in Kapunda, who died in the billiard room of the hotel after suffering a heart attack.
 Joseph Caddy, a local music teacher and a politician who died of natural causes in an upstairs bedroom.
 In 1912 Mr Henry Fairclough, publican of the hotel for 14 years became very ill, and by November of that year had been confined to his bed as his condition worsened. On Monday 17 November 1912, Henry Fairclough lost his battle with illness and passed away in the upstairs bedroom he shared with his wife.
 Dennis Horgan, was publican of the hotel from 1913 until 1919, then again in 1925. Horgan died from a heart attack in the hotel in December 1925 in an upstairs room he shared with his wife.
 Other deaths reported include that of servants, at least two young prostitutes, a travelling salesman, and at least 3 young children.

 The North Kapunda Hotel was featured in the 2000 Documentary “Kapunda: Most Haunted Town in the Western World”, in episode 7 of Haunting: Australia, and in 2015 gained international attention when tourism website Travel MSN listed it as the 8^th most haunted bar or pub in the world!

The hotel has numerous ghost stories, too many to cover here – so here are a few of my own personal experiences from investigating and visiting the hotel from 2009 until now.

Ghostly fingers across a guests face in 2015
(date in photo is incorrect)

I had many ghostly experiences in the hotel after tours and on private investigations, but the most memorable for me happened one night after a tour. As the last guests were leaving. Karen and I were doing our “after-tour” walkthrough, to lock up the hotel and make sure no-one had been locked inside. As I went to close the tour room door, I turned and saw a young girl, I would estimate around 7 years old, standing in the hallway looking at me.

 She didn't appear “ghostly”, she looked like a real little girl, except her clothing was very old, much like a pinafore, similar in style to the clothing actress Shirley Temple would've worn near the beginning of her movie career. My first instinct was that someone’s child from downstairs had somehow gotten upstairs.

 The girl suddenly turned and ran towards room 1, a room we have now dubbed “The Nursery Room”. I quickly followed, knowing she was trapped as I had just locked from the outside the only other exit door to the rooms she was running toward. I made my way down the hallway, into the Nursery Room, the Dressing room and back into the Drawing room, to find no-one in there at all. I checked the windows, locked from the inside, I checked under the bed, nothing.

  This ghostly young girl did not glow, she was not misty, nor did she have any of the other attributes we associate with spirits or ghosts. She looked as real as my wife who was waiting for me at the top of the stairs in case the girl came back that way – it was an unusual encounter, but not the last time I would encounter this little girl.

 The Nursery Room proved to have other spirits. One spirit manifested and was witnessed by a young man, who during the evening, had thought it would be funny to jump out and scare other tour guests,

An apparition of a boy in the basement. Some claim pariedolia,
but later photos show the boy in a different position.

little did he know, the spirits were about to do the same to him.

 As he came into the Nursery Room the back way through the Drawing Room, he stepped through the threshold of the Nursery Room door and witnessed a partially manifested spirit of a woman standing behind the door. This young man had been sceptical all night, but this incident changed his whole perspective.

 It was also in this room a man was groped by a ghost on the backside, which also happened to another gentleman in the Hallway to Hell, one of the flirtatious prostitute spirits perhaps?

The Commercial Room on the first floor also proved to have several spirits, although these ones are passive, and at least one seems to be a residual haunting and not an intelligent haunting. It was in this room the tours originally started, and on one tour, a guest pulled me aside to let me know a man had been standing next to me the whole time I had been speaking. She described him as wearing a suit, about the same height as me, very thin, and amused and puzzled as to why I was standing in the hotel talking about ghosts.

 It was in this same room on another night, a young woman witnessed the spirit of a man, standing in the far corner facing the wall, looking rather morose and staring at an old tapestry that has hung on the wall for over a century.
 Another spirit was that of a man who has been witnessed standing in front of a window looking out into the Main Street below, transfixed by what he was looking at. In his right hand, he was continuously opening and closing a pocket watch chained to his inner pocket.

 On a tour, a young lady who went into the Commercial Room and witnessed this apparition, but it wasn’t until she entered the front bar and saw the mural of Sir Sidney Kidman it dawned on her who she had just seen!

(Video by Paranormal Spectrum - used with permission)

During the filming of Haunting: Australia, paranormal guru Gaurav Tiwari and I set up several ghost hunting devices given to us by Jason Dickson of Apparition Technologies. We placed REM Pods (a device that emits an electromagnetic field from an aerial, that if a spirit comes close to, will set off a warning alarm and coloured lights) as well as voice recorders, EM Pumps (a device that emits a very strong electromagnetic field thought to attract spirits) and Vibration Detectors in the downstairs hallway basement, a large side room that was once bedrooms, originally for the cooks, but eventually used by prostitutes.

 Whilst standing in the basement, a room once used to store dead bodies, kegs of rum and kegs of beer, we began to ask if there was anyone present who wished to communicate with us. It didn’t take long to get an answer. I was standing where I could see into the downstairs hallway to watch if the lights on any of the devices were turning on, all of the sudden, I saw a young girl, no more than 7 years old, walk into the dimly lit hallway, and into the doorway of the room Gaurav and I were standing in!
  Without hesitating (or thinking) I chased after her to find out who she was. She ran into the hallway and turned left into the arched hallway that led to the former basement bedrooms, an old decrepit room with damaged floors and no ventilation. Gaurav was following quickly behind. There was nowhere for the girl to escape too, but she was not to be found in the room.

 Whilst standing in the room, we noticed a small window that looks into a smaller room, which in turn has a doorway back into the hallway. Gaurav noticed some movement, so we ventured back into the hallway. At this point, the cameraman’s batteries failed so he radioed back to central control to get a go-fer to bring down a fresh battery for him.

As he did this, Gaurav who had turned to look back into the bedrooms noticed a large shadow jump across a doorway, which startled him enough to drop a few swear words! We re-entered the room, whilst Mick, our cameraman waited in the hallway, just as we entered the bedroom, Mick heard our REM pods going off and thinking it was the runner with the battery turned to say thanks, only to notice no-one there!

In the next few minutes, things really picked up. Gaurav and I raced into the hallway to see all our REM Pods and Vibration meters lit to full, every light in the basement, including our torches and camera lights suddenly drained completely and we were left in total pitch black. At the same time, Mick got a call over his headset to get the hell upstairs as the producers thought Ray may have had a heart attack in the Hallway to Hell.

 The three of us, in pitch black, found our way out of the basement hallway, and onto the stairs that lead back up to the ground floor hallway, only to find the metal bar doors locked. Just as we got to the top we saw Field Producer Lucy Connors and a camera crew walking backwards. Ian and Rayleen passed us supporting Ray and were heading into the beer garden. I tried the metal-bar door again, and suddenly it unblocked, and we were free of the basement!

 We followed them outside not knowing exactly what had happened.

 Ray was very pale and did not look good, he was crying and slouched over. Ian performed an exorcism on him. Ray was vomiting and pale and looked very unwell, but not long after Ian started his exorcism, Ray suddenly looked a lot better, got up, and left the beer garden to go back into the break area and away from the hotel.
 As Ray left, Rayleen was very suddenly and very vocally saying the Lord’s Prayer at break need speed, as she was overcome with whatever had just left Ray. Gaurav performed a cleansing ritual on her, and soon she too left to go into the break room and recover, with Ian following closely behind to make sure they were both OK.

 This left Gaurav, Robb and me standing in the beer garden wondering what had just happened. Without hesitation, Robb told Gaurav and I to go upstairs and find out what was going on.

Considering neither of us are psychics, it probably wasn’t the smartest move, but we're paranormal investigators, right? Fearless to the end and go where Angels fear to tread. To lighten the very heavy feeling the hotel now had upstairs, Gaurav and I began to crack jokes about just how tough and manly we are. We then entered The Hallway to Hell, which felt very different from how it did earlier in the night, much more foreboding, but much more “alive”.

 It took only a few seconds for things to start to happen, within minutes of being in the hallway I witnessed a full-bodied apparition of a woman dressed in a period dress that I could only describe as from the “Victorian” era. The Dress was black and lacy, the woman was very white in the face, red full lips, but had a very sad look to her demeanour. She walked backwards into room 11, and I released a number of swear words in disbelief of what I was seeing with my own eyes!! (the edit on television was a few seconds, in reality, my swearing probably went for a few minutes).

In the next half-an-hour, Gaurav and I experienced 3 gunshot sounds, they were clear and very, very loud. The first, in room 11, was right after seeing the mysterious woman disappear into the room, it

came from the air in the centre of the room and echoed throughout the room. I suggested later during our reveal filming at the Old Kapunda Courthouse, that the noise may not have been a gunshot at all but could have been the sound of what psychics and mediums call a “portal” snapping closed as the spirit returned to her own realm.

 We heard the next shot only a few minutes later in room 12, which is the room in which Ray was partially possessed and fell to the floor. At the time we didn’t realise his voice recorder was still in the room recording. Later we would find out Ray had captured an EVP of someone saying, “hates blue eyes”, it also contained the gunshot sound we heard in the room.

 As we re-entered the hallway, I heard footsteps, so we turned to look in the direction they came from, as we did so, a stone was thrown at us. Next, we entered room 13, where we thought the footsteps had gone, only to hear another, and the loudest of the gunshot noises for the evening.

 This is also around the time Gaurav took a photo that he claimed later, looked like a shadow person standing on the stairs leading out of the hallway. In the reveal, I declare that I cannot see what he was talking about, and I honestly could not at the time see anything resembling a person in his photo, but a few months later, after filming, I would see for myself a shadow person in the Hallway to Hell right where Gaurav had claimed to capture his photo.

 As a side note, the Haunting Australia episode featuring The North Kapunda Hotel rated first place on Foxtel as the most viewed show the night it was broadcast, beating “The Walking Dead” and other popular shows – so on behalf of all of the cast – thank you to each and every person who watched the episode and supported the show.

Another very important thing that happened whilst filming Haunting: Australia which was never aired, occurred to my wife Karen and to “psychic bad-boy” Ian Lawman. Ian was in the basement under the front bar when psychically he picked up on a poker game being played.
  He described the gentleman running the game and even got his name and a few attributes associated with him. My wife worked in the hotel in 2009, and knew the name of the person as a former publican, but didn’t know anything about him. So, Karen made a phone call to her former boss who ran the hotel in 2009 and asked her if she knew anything about this man, who was named “Charlie”. As it happened, she did know him, and confirmed everything Ian said, even down to his description, his dog and the poker games!

Karen was subsequently interviewed as a witness for the show, in a portion that would have confirmed Ian's psychic abilities, that was for reasons unknown to the cast, entirely cut from the episode, which was a great loss for the viewers as it would have proved that Ian does actually have psychic ability (even if he is a scaredy cat and runs from some of the ghosts!)

I may at some point reveal more about ghostly goings on in the North Kapunda Hotel, perhaps in a book.

Researched and written by Allen Tiller © 2019

Contagious Behaviour

Contagious Behaviour

When Karen and I led ghost tours through the North Kapunda Hotel, we set up the tour to be an experience for our guests, not just "another tour".
The idea was to slowly build anticipation for the finale of the tour, The Hallway to Hell. We did this by starting slowly with the history of the town, then some ghost stories, a short video from Haunting Australia, then a walk around the town telling ghost stories.

We were priming our audience intentionally (and sometimes unintentionally), getting them hyped for their experience and for the finale. We wanted everyone to have a good time, get value for money, learn some history about Kapunda and hopefully see a ghost, or at least have some kind of “Personal Experience”.

More often than not, people would come away with at least one personal experience, or an experience they personally attributed to the paranormal.

What we noticed during our two years as tour guides was that the smaller the group, the less likely a “paranormal experience” was to happen. The tour didn’t change, we delivered our information with the same passion and high standards we set for ourselves each week, but for some reason the fewer in the tour group, the less “paranormal activity” felt on the tour.

I now believe what we were experiencing was a form of contagious behaviour. Perhaps this explanation via anomalistic psychology accounts for the higher number of anomalies during tours, or public “ghost hunt” events that are actually personal experiences and NOT genuinely “paranormal” in origin?

What is contagious behaviour?

Contagious behaviour is a type of social influence. The most common form is yawning. See someone else yawn, and more often than not, you will do the same, some of you may even be yawning as you read the word 'yawn' or think about someone else yawning!

Other contagious behaviours can include: smiling, laughing, rudeness, happiness, shivering, fear, anxiety and even risk-taking!

Contagious behaviour is seen within the demographics of protests quite often, when one person begins to punch/kick/ or struggle against authority, their behaviour can lead to others doing the same, and before you know it, you have a riot on your hands!

 In a situation like a ghost tour, it is a little bit different. As the person leading the tour, you are seen as an authority on the subject, so when, as a paranormal investigator,  you tell your own ghost stories, it adds credibility to the experience. When you speak about others experiences and paranormal events that have happened on previous tours, you begin to prime the audience for their own paranormal experience.

 In some guests, you're installing fear, or bringing out subconscious fears. That fear is contagious, and the people around that person will begin to react to it, some will challenge the fear, (the fighters), others will embrace it and become fearful as well (the flee-ers) – their natural “fight or flight” instinct is working away deep in their subconscious. The more people you have on the tour (especially if they are known to each other), the more this fearful energy travels through the group – and as they are there to feel/see/hear a ghost, and are not aware of the many natural explanations (xenonormal) for sounds, smells, etc,  more often than not, they will come away with a ghost story or experience…

…This, of course, lends to the next tour, as they go tell their friends about their ghostly experience, so the friend is pre-primed before they’ve even done the tour!
 It also adds to the mystique of the location, and to the spreading of urban legend…and so, what was once just another pub like any other, becomes a legendary haunted location with portals to the ghost realm!

So, next time you are on a ghost tour, have a look around at the people you are with, and see who is scared the most, then watch to see if those around them begin to get frightened too.

Thanks for reading – want to comment or ask a question, do so in the box below, or visit the Haunts of Adelaide on Facebook and find this post.

Bibliography

Ogunlade, J. O. (1979). Personality characteristics related to susceptibility to behavioural contagion. Social Behavior and Personality: an International Journal, 7(2), 205.

Holt N & Simmonds-Moore C & Luke D & French C, 2012, Anomalistic Psychology (Palgrave Insights in Psychology). Palgrave Macmillan

Nicola Holt, Christine Simmonds-Moore, David Luke, Christopher French. (2012). Anomalistic Psychology (Palgrave Insights in Psychology). Palgrave Macmillan

The Manhattan Dry Cleaners Haunting - Adelaide Arcade

The Manhattan Dry Cleaners Haunting - Adelaide Arcade

The Adelaide Arcade was officially opened on the 12th of December 1885 by Governor Sir William Robinson to much fanfare and celebration.

 The new arcade, between Rundle Street and Grenfell Street was to host Turkish Baths, 50 stores, accommodation for store owners, floored with Kapunda Marble, specially sourced glass panels from England and a first for the City of Adelaide - electric lighting.

 The Arcade needed to have its own power generator, as electric lighting as we know it today did not exist. A gas fired generator was bolted to the floor of shop nine and was written about in the

Adelaide Observer, 19th Dec.1885, page 33:

“The engine Room is well worth the visit. Here there is the dynamo which works the electric light. In the centre are the soft-iron magnets and the thousands of coils of wire so beautifully placed in relation to each other that the slightest current engendered in the wire shall immediately accumulate over and over almost ad infinitum. The soft Iron magnets do their part by reason of the positive and negative poles in their mutual attractive force creating electricity. The current before passing on to the insulated wires branching off to the sixteen lamps has to pass over a little bridge of thin platinum.”

 It was the job of Henry Harcourt, the Adelaide Arcades Engineer, to light and extinguish the Arcade lights, and monitor and service the generator as needed. On June 21st 1887, Mr Harcourt had to leave early for an Exhibition elsewhere in the City, telling Francis Cluney, the Arcade Beadle (a person like a cross between a security guard and an usher) that he would return in 15 minutes.

 Francis was a well-liked gentleman, always dressed in his red military uniform that he had worn during service in the Crimean and Boar Wars. On this evening a group of young men had been making a nuisance of themselves, breaking picture frames at Mr Tattles Photography shop at the Grenfell Street end of the Arcade.

 Francis chased them down, and brought them back to the Arcade to pay for their damage. The young man hung around though, and Francis was heard to say to Mr Tattle; “If the Larrikins keep going on like that I will do as I did last night and put all the lights out”

Mr Harcourt left at 5 minutes past 8pm, and sometime in the next ten minutes, Francis Cluney, who had gone to check on the gas turbine, lost his life.

At 8:12pm – Mr W.C Sims was walking through the Arcade and noticed the lights suddenly go off, and as he got closer to shop 9, he noticed a young fellow by the name “Horne”, leaving the shop, exclaiming “There is a man killed!” – was Mr Horne, perhaps, the last person to see Mr Cluney alive?

A Police Officer was called, and with Mr Sims, they entered shop 9 to find what was a distorted and almost totally unrecognisable person caught in the electricity generator – unrecognisable, except for the distinct red uniform.

The following newspaper report comes from the Territory Times on August 6th 1887, describing the condition of Mr Cluneys body

“It took all the strength of six men to drag the fly-wheel back so as to extricate the body of the unfortunate victim. The engine has two fly-wheels parallel to each other and about 4 feet apart. The body was found with the head and shoulders jammed in between the right fly-wheel and the body of the engine. The upper part of the man's head was smashed to atoms, the fragments of the skull being' scattered upon the floor and the engine. The head disfigured beyond recognition, and one foot was torn off. No one saw the accident, and the unfortunate man seems to have been killed almost instantly by the revolving fly-wheel, one of the spokes of which smashed the skull. As far as can be judged Cluney must have fallen accidentally against the inner edge of the fly-wheel, which is five or six feet in diameter, and was then jammed against the engine, his body checking the machinery and causing the extinction of the light”

 Since the death of Francis Cluney, there have been sightings of his spirit in the Arcade, but particularly in shop 9, which is now held by the Manhattan Dry Cleaners.

 Most sightings of Francis are fast moving blurs and shadows, and it is said he has a distinct dislike to rude, arrogant and loud people, or for people talking about electric lighting.

 The Manhattan Dry Cleaners, was where the death of child, Sydney Byron Kennedy occurred (not in the Adelaide Arcade museum as so many reports and tours state).

 Madame and Professor Kennedy, “Clairvoyants, Phrenologists and Palmists”, had their business in shop 11 (now one half of the Manhattan Drycleaners). Their real names were Bridget Lauretta Kennedy Byron and Professor Michael Kennedy Byron, the two had a young son named Sydney.
 Whilst their relationship looked good from the outside, the couple were not getting along. Michael left Bridget, and took their one year old son to live in Tasmania, while there, he met another woman, and began a relationship with her.

 Bridget, grief stricken over the lost relationship, and not sure where her husband and son had gone, hired a private detective to track them down. To deal with the emotional turmoil while awaiting news of he son, Bridget turned to alcohol and pills to quell her grief.
 The detective returned just before Christmas in 1901, and with him was Sydney. Bridget was overjoyed, and again, took to alcohol to celebrate.
 On the 12th of January 1902, newspapers reported the tragic finding of a 3 year old boy, found dead under peculiar circumstances. Mrs Kennedy was arrested and charged with murder – the story broke nationally.

 During the trial evidence was submitted that Mrs Kennedy had left Sydney asleep in the upstairs dining room of shop 11. Mrs Kennedy, who was lying next to the boy, and not in her bedroom, was awoken by her housemaid and the child’s nanny at 7am, both of whom complained that there was an unusual smell of gas in the residence, and began to open windows.

 The Nanny tried to rouse the 3 year old boy, but unfortunately he was dead.
 The trial proceed for many days, with national press coverage, but eventually, because of her doctors evidence of substance abuse, Mrs Kennedy was not charged, however, in her head she was guilty, and she fell into a pit of despair and gloom, turning even harder into the bottle.
 Mrs Kennedy was found dead only a few months later in August, her body was recovered in the west parklands.

 It is thought Bridget Kennedy still haunts the arcade and on occasion she has been seen. Sydney Kennedy on the other hand, has been seen many time in the Arcade, and during the filming of Haunting: Australia, myself and psychic Ian Lawman had our own experience with a young child in Arcade lane, between the Regent and Adelaide Arcade, running past us and into a now bricked up doorway.

 In 2013, I was part of the first ever professional paranormal investigation by anyone in the Adelaide Arcade as part of Haunting: Australia. Whilst in the Manhattan Dry Cleaners, Robb Demarest and myself experienced phenomena that intrigued us greatly. We both felt touching sensations on our hands, as if being shook, hot and cold touching, and a very distinct disembodied voice answered Robb’s question directly – none of this was sensationalised nor faked – what you saw on the show, is as it happened.

In 2015 my team Eidolon Paranormal was invited by the Berry Family to investigate the Dry Cleaners after hours, and in turn , we invited Ghost Crime Paranormal Investigators to join us on the evening, in what became the 2nd ever paranormal investigation to ever happen at the shop.

While it didn’t seem as active as the night we filmed Haunting: Australia, we did have interaction via REM Pod with what we believe to be a spirit, however, on this occasion we were not able to record any EVP’s or other useful data to corroborate the REM Pod as definitive proof of the haunting.

 The Berry family have experienced many strange and unusual happenings in the shop, including disembodied voices, poltergeist like activity, phantom footsteps, touching and cold spots.

More recently, as part of an interview for a local newspaper, we visited the shop and talked to members of the Berry family, who stated that Mr Cluney, is indeed still haunting the premises,  and making himself known.

I am wondering, if one day, Adelaide might embrace its most famous ghost and celebrate him with a festival like the "Festival of Fishers Ghost" in Campbelltown NSW, a festival so popular and inclusive it spans 10 days and includes a parade and fireworks!

 How can we make something like this happen in Adelaide, one of the most haunted cities in Australia!?!

Allen Tiller in the Adelaide Arcade - Picture: Tricia Watkinson.